David:     Karen, it seems the Church of the Middle Ages had a special fondness for the number seven. Think the seven deadly sins, the seven carnal virtues, seven works of mercy.

Karen:     Also, the seven sacraments of the Church. Incidentally, can you name the seven deadly sins or the so-called seven deadly sins?

David:     Can you name them?

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     Well off the top of my head, no, I could not have named them, but I looked them up. So here they are. Back in the Middle Ages, these were the seven big ones. Pride, understand that. Greed, got it Karen?

Karen:     Uh-huh.

David:     Luxury, that makes sense.

Karen:     It’s priced with that one.

David:     Yeah, a little bit different. Envy, gluttony, didn’t think that was going to be on the list. Anger and despair, that’s kind of unusual as well.

Karen:     Another question just to be clear. You use the term Middle Ages, what dates are we talking about exactly? Because I think people have different ideas what the Middle Ages were.

David:     Well, I think of it this way and I’m not sure what an expert in the field would say. But I think of about a thousand years. Generally speaking, as the fall of Rome, I’m not exact dates here, but say 500 AD to 1500 AD, which is just prior to the Reformation. So, there’s a thousand years in there when we’re talking the seven deadly sins, they come into the church generally speaking around 1300.

And the sad part of all that Karen is, in the 1400s the seven sins that the church talked about now invade the church.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     So, it’s just an interesting way to look at it. Did I confuse you?

Karen:     No, I think that’s very helpful because it puts us on the same page. So, then we have the Reformation, which is what, 1500?

David:     Yeah, let’s start with Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the Cathedral door in Wittenberg. That’s 1517.

So again, I’m saying 500 AD to 1500 AD, that’s what you’re talking the Middle Ages. And the last part of that is when they begin talking about the seven deadly sins. So, everybody knows what they’re talking about. I want to use this visit, Karen, to talk about what you and I see as the sins of the American culture. Doesn’t mean we have come up with a new list of seven. I don’t think we’ll try to hit the number seven. I just see this as an important conversation because in my mind, and I’ve been in many, many churches in these last years, you don’t hear about sin anymore. It’s like nobody’s talking about sin.

Karen:     And I think that’s because we become psychologically astute. We see that there causes for certain kinds of behaviors that would be named as sins. But scripture still has a point that it makes over and over again, that we are flawed people, and we revert to attitudes and actions that are not godly. So, those are the things we want to look at in these podcasts. What would those possibly be?

David:     And then next time we get together for a podcast, I’m going to concentrate on the sins of the church.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     So that we’re talking about the culture at this point in time. I’m not going to give them in any order. I’m not going to say this is the worst of the sins and this next worst and so on. I’m not going to talk about seven.

Karen:     Nor is this a definitive list. This is just sort of a personal examination that we sort of say, “Well, what if we’re going to name them? What would we name those sins to be?” So that’s what we’re doing today.

David:     I would say in terms of America, one of them that has come in my lifetime to be much bigger is the matter of lying. You see it in the political realm, which is easier than talking about the church. But you can’t count on what people say and they’ll actually play tapes of saying something and then it’s, well, it wasn’t a big deal. You know, and then they excuse their way so that I think there are a lot of people who, what is truth?

Karen:     And we grew up in our generation, where certainly in Christian homes, you were taught not to lie. That lying was a sin and you were to be truthful and to tell the truth. But it was also a high value in our culture. I can remember there were certain people, men particularly, who would say “My word is my bond. If I say it, you can trust it.” And we did. I mean, you had a standard of authenticity that was shown because you were a truth teller and truth was important to you. Now that just doesn’t happen in our broader culture in a way that we can trust anymore.

David:     In fact, here, and I would say, you know, the American culture, people can’t even agree on what the truth is. It’s all confusion and mockiness.

Karen:     And one of the things that just bugs you to pieces is when people put a spin on stuff. They make it look better than it is. It’s distressing when people can’t say this is what I see as truth and I’m calling it as truth. And I think I can stand on that. It’s variable and hard to really define what truth is in this culture.

David:     Violence. That’s one that just wrenches you. Indiscriminate shootings. Week after week after week, you know, the school shootings, how to solve those problems. It’s not that difficult. It could be solved. But there are other related sins that we don’t allow them to be solved. You think, here we go again, you know, it’s a…

Karen:     …mass shooting.

David:     In a mall.

Karen:     A mall.

David:     A shooting, yeah.

Karen:     Yeah, just unbelievable. I mean, there’s hardly a day that goes past where the news reports don’t come through of some sort of indiscriminate mass shooting somewhere.

David:     Yeah, and when you say indiscriminate, in Chicago, where we live in the suburbs of Chicago, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a child or…

Karen:     Someone driving in a car in the expressway that they don’t know about.

David:     Yeah, it just, it is incredible what this nation has come to and how we can’t seem to resolve these problems.

Let me name another one. This is a massive problem and it’s grown much bigger since I think of my younger days. That’s the whole area of lust. And when I say lust, if I take it into a more contemporary language, it would be this huge problem of pornography in terms of the nation. And it just eats away at the core of who we are as people.

Karen:     It’s easily available. I mean, child pornography is horrendous.

David:     When you say pornography, it’s one thing when you say child pornography.

Karen:     Always awful. And so that’s increased dilemmas in our culture that I’m not sure we have measurements on it yet, but it’s a huge, huge problem. The problem is its addictive. And so, when you begin to expose yourself to it, then it catches you and it becomes an addictive thing. It’s like taking a kind of drug because it sets off those sorts of endorphins in your brain. So anyway, it’s a huge problem. I agree with you.

David:     I’ll say another one and we feel quite strongly about it, and we’ll probably get a reaction from some people, maybe not. Maybe people say, “Yeah, I’m glad you included that in terms of a list when you talk about sins of the country.” And that would be racism. We worked for 10 years of our early life in the inner city of Chicago and realized that we were racist. That was part of our background. And we’ve learned a lot and grown a lot. And still, racism is a part of our lives that we wish we could get past. I would say I’m a recovering racist, but I haven’t totally recovered yet.

Karen:     I had a white woman say to me, “We’re not a racist culture.” 2018, I mentioned this before in the podcast, I had a physical collapse, and I couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. I lost, what, 40 pounds? I wasn’t trying to lose 40 pounds in a period of four or five months. And they finally found a hernia that was affecting my digestive system. But during those months, because I couldn’t do much of anything else, I started to read all the books written mainly by many black people on racism in our culture. And it’s easy to say you’re not a racist when you’re not affected by it. But one of the devious things about racism is it has become systemic in our culture. And I didn’t know about systemic anything when I started reading this, that it’s written into laws, neighborhoods have what’s called redlining, where people of color can’t buy or move into those neighborhoods. I mean, it’s just a huge problem. I think where we are in our culture now is we have an understanding that there is a big problem with racism. Not everyone, but there are very articulate, educated black voices who have looked at this from the inception of America through all of its years, how it’s been built into our systems. And so, it’s very, very helpful to educate ourselves. And that’s one of the things we must do when we’re whites, and what was the majority white culture fast becoming no longer a majority white culture. We enjoyed all the privileges of being white without knowing that sometimes that way we’re even enjoying it. And that’s part of partaking in racism. It’s nothing we choose intentionally to do, but it is what our systems have allowed us to function in.

It’s not easy to understand. And so, if we’re going to really understand what the meaning of racism is in our culture, we have to do deliberate learning. We have to be educated. We have to educate ourselves as to how it exists.

David:     Expose ourselves to different voices.

Karen:     To different voices. Yes, right, exactly.

David:     Keep moving on. This one may seem like it’s kind of picky, but it’s huge in my mind. I think we are a nation where profanity is becoming more and more common. You just hear it all the time. When Will Smith at the Academy Awards, you know, you couldn’t help but see it because it replayed over and over again.

Karen:     Yeah, if you had any television.

David:     When he came and smacked Chris Rock, referring to his wife.

Karen:     His wife.

David:     The nation reacted to that. I mean, Will Smith is a very popular actor. What it didn’t react to in my mind was the profanity that he screamed out that night. And I thought, as soon as I heard it, it just, that’s not right.

Karen:     We’re saying that the scripture teaches us we are not to take the Lord’s name in vain, which was what that profanity did. But we hear it so frequently that we don’t have a check inside of us that says, “Wow, that is really wrong.” Part of the 10 commandments.

David:     Yes, of course it is.

Karen:     But our culture has profaned this language so much that we don’t notice it the way we used to it another time.

David:     We’re beginning to grind on people. I don’t know. I hope not. I’m just saying this is what we’re thinking in terms of. I would say that greed and envy, I would like to put it into a specific area, Karen. And I would say that gambling has become a massive problem in this culture. It wasn’t that long ago when Pete Rose, who was one of the best baseball players who ever lived, he was not allowed to be put into the Hall of Fame. And he’s still not because he gambled on games. Well, now the whole industry, it’s gambling.

Karen:     It’s gambling.

David:     It’s not just, it’s not just baseball. It’s all the sport. And it’s very alluring. Don’t just watch, be a participant.

Karen:     Yeah, earn some money too. Opportunity to make some funds here, yeah.

David:     If you asked the question 40, 50 years ago, would gambling be a good thing to be a part of our whole sports culture? I mean, nobody would say it, especially from Chicago, you say the White Sox became the Black Sox because they threw the World Series. You know, gambling is not a good idea. It’s addictive again. This is not wise, but it is now a huge part of our culture. And the sports world, I say this is not a good thing.

I would say here in another big area, we’ll just get a couple more and then I’ll stop because I don’t want to sound like we’re ranting. Theft. And it’s not just holdups or people breaking in the house, carrying this cyber theft. There are all kinds of things that going on. We experienced this firsthand.

Karen:     Yeah, I think we may have mentioned this on the podcast before we received notice from the small business administration that the loans, they had made to us $25,000 to you, $25,000 to me would start to come do and we would need to start paying them down. Well, of course, we hadn’t taken those loans out. In fact, as I began to research this or actually one of our staff persons really began to research and then stayed on it until they could say and prove that we had not indeed taken these loans out. There were a lot of monies that were given at the beginning of the COVID outbreak to small businesses and these loans came through the small business administration.

Well, there was all kinds of graft that went on with that. I mean, no one called us from the small business administration and said, “We’re checking up. Have you taken out these loans?” There was nothing that checked up to see where this money was going.

So finally, that was settled, and our names were cleared from it because they had so many identity theft reports that they had declared out the credit bureau of the government began to take it on. But what an absolute shock.

David:     And we have no idea who has that money.

Karen:     No, they don’t.

David:     And they still, somebody’s got $50,000.

Karen:     Well, it’s more than that. Some people have, I mean, it was just indiscriminate looting really. It was amazing.

David:     It’s the whole area of theft. It’s big. Karen, we’re of the age where you get AARP magazines. A lot of those magazines that come are warning people of the scams. Every time you pick up the phone, you say, “Is this legit or not?” And in many ways, I don’t even answer.

Karen:     You don’t even answer. Yeah.

David:     But this is a part of the culture in which we live.

Another one where I don’t think that most people would put this on the list, and I need to stop because it becomes a very long list, is the whole area of entertainment addiction. I’m bored. Do something that is fun for me. When kids say that, you say, “What do you mean you’re bored? We live in this wonderful world, and you’re bored.”

People waste hours. It’s a mentality that I don’t think is very good. And I would call it superficiality. Living a life that’s superficial. It is wrong.

Karen:     Spending hours watching things that have no eternal meaning. And we need to reactivate that question we used to ask ourselves, “Does this have heavenly value? Are the things I’m watching creating intellectual prowess in me that I didn’t have before? Am I learning? Is it a learning environment or is it simply the superficial entertainment?”

Well, we’re wasting hours in front of our screens with things that have no heavenly import. And so, I think it’s time again to begin to say, “Can I say to the Lord today that I used the time allotted to me for this day. Well, for the sake of getting to know Him better or doing the work of the kingdom or being kind to my neighbors.” Things that have kingdom value, I guess, is what I’m going for then.

David:     In the scriptures, the prophets called out the sins of Israel or Judah. I’m wondering if it’s not proper for ministers to begin to characterize present day America as a sinful nation. I wish we were doing this with a group because I would be very fascinated to know what the people in the group would say. You’re on target or you’re getting a little bit judgmental there. Yeah, that’s the thing.

Karen:     It would be interesting to be in a group session and have a conversation. And what do you see as the sins of America in our present-day time? And are you hearing these things from the pulpit that you listen to Sunday after Sunday?

David:     I think, Karen, that we still have this impression that we are a wonderful nation. We’re the light of the world, the city on the hill. And there’s some truth to that, especially during this time when America has stepped up and in a phenomenal way helped a country like Ukraine. And there is good, but is it also fitting for the clergy to begin talking about some of America’s sin? Because I think that the day has come when this needs to begin to happen.

When the prophets do that in scripture, there’s a huge reaction.

Karen:     The Lord seemed to give them messages that were just really, really hard to speak to Israel and hard for Israel to hear. And many of them suffered for it as well.

David:     Let me give just one and everybody will recognize this right away. And it’s used by ministers to talk about individual sins. But this is to the nation. This is one of the greatest of all the prophets. This is Isaiah in the Old Testament time. “Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

Well, he is talking about the sins of the culture. I’ve read that passage time and again about individuals. God says to you. “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land. But if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Karen:     It’s powerful.

David:     And I think Karen, what is happening is we’re coming to a day when the mouth of the Lord needs to begin to speak in a prophetic way to the church as a beginning and to the culture. And I think that day is upon us now. I titled this podcast, “Our Sinful Nation?” Because I want people to wrestle with this even as we are trying to wrestle with it.

And in a sentence, I’m saying it is fitting for the clergy, that includes people like me, it is fitting for the clergy to begin talking about America’s sins. And I would say that I want to take it further next time we get together and we’ll talk not just about the overall culture, but we’ll talk about the sins of the believers, sins of the church, and see where we go with that. Maybe we’ll lose people this time and maybe there won’t be any people listening this time.

I don’t think so. I think what we’re saying, there are a lot of people who are resonating with those words.

Outro:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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